Contents

The baptism record

This record is normally a very short piece of text. However, important information can be learned from it: name of child, date of baptism, date of birth, parents' names, witnesses names, place of residence. Furthermore, from the signatures one can determine that the parents/witnesses had basic schooling.

Through history

Catholic Church

The Catholic Church started to keep registries for the sacraments of baptism and marriage. This started in the 14th century in Italy and France. The oldest known registries are kept in the city of Geiry (France) and date back to 1334.

The Catholic Church decided during the Council of Trente on November 11, 1563 on the rules concerning the keeping of parish registries for baptisms and marriages. Since 1614 death records also became obligatory. These dates are hence the earliest dates one can realistically attempt to obtain in the creation of a family tree.

Note that the introduction of a civil office occurs in general in the period following the French Revolution. These documents, birth certificates, are in general more easy to track than baptism records.

Examples

1748, Belgium

The image to the left is a birth certificate from 1748, found in a parish registry of a parish near Ghent, Belgium. The Latin text reads roughly: